Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

David A Muller

@davidamuller.bsky.social

370 followers 460 following 110 posts

"Learning more and more about less and less" Materials Physics and Electron Microscopy at Cornell (he/him) https://muller.research.engineering.cornell.edu/

muller.research.engineering.cornell.edu

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · Apr 23

#cryoEM Lena and I started working on this project almost 10 years ago, with @ktspoth and then Yue taking data. Lena passed away before she could finish the paper, even as other groups were finding it very useful. With Yue and friends we finally got something out! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Dose-Efficient Cryo-Electron Microscopy for Thick Samples using Tilt-Corrected Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy, Demonstrated on Cells and Single Particles

bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution

www.biorxiv.org

2 2 10

David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 7h

Jim West's group taught us everything we know about building ultra-quiet rooms

Ainissa Ramirez, PhD @ainissaramirez.bsky.social · 8h

SPARK sighting at @possible-futures.bsky.social!

Less than two weeks till it's available at a bookstore near you!

Share the story of Jim West and his invention of the microphone we all use today on Zoom, phones 🎤

Preorder here: bit.ly/SPARKbk

#WomeninSTEM 🧪
#SciArt
#Booksky
#Science
#Blacksky

1 1 2

David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 1d

Ducktober

Two wood ducks paddling together in Cayuga lake as the trees on the opposite shore are just starting to turn

1 2

David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 1d

Astro folks might want a turn?

1 1

David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · 14d

#cryoEM 🧪⚛️ Lena’s paper on imaging thick biological sections with STEM is finally published! We started this work almost 10 years ago. After Lena passed in 2023, I spent much of my sabbatical working with Yue and Steve to wrap this up. Also learned a lot about TEM vs STEM dose efficiency

Nature Methods @natmethods.nature.com · 15d

Tilt-corrected bright-field scanning transmission electron microscopy (tcBF-STEM) offers enhanced contrast and dose efficiency for cryo-EM in thick biological specimens.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Dose-efficient cryo-electron microscopy for thick samples using tilt- corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy - Nature Methods

Tilt-corrected bright-field scanning transmission electron microscopy offers enhanced cryogenic electron microscopy contrast and substantial improvement in dose efficiency for thick samples such as bacterial cells and large organelles, while still being able to perform single-particle analysis.

www.nature.com

4 19

David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · Aug 28

Some good news 🧪⚛️

John Scalzi @scalzi.com · Aug 27

FUCK YEAH SCIENCE

arstechnica.com/science/2025...

Bluesky now platform of choice for science community

It’s not just you. Survey says: “Twitter sucks now and all the cool kids are moving to Bluesky”…

arstechnica.com

1 10 72

David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · Aug 5

We had 35 participants at our summer school a few weeks ago testing this on their laptops. Turns out a Macbook M4 pro is almost as fast as a 10GB slice of an A100. From the school, here is a 1-hour reconstruction. (Data took a few seconds to record at the school in a crowded scope room)

Electron ptychography 3D reconstruction of SiC after 100 iterations, taking 1 hour. This is an animated depth section showing the depth slicing through a thin SiC film and its interface with an amorphous layer. A small hole drilled with a parked electron beam is visible in the top half of the image

David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · Aug 5

Our new zippy ptychography code, PtyRAD is now out in print. 3D Multislice reconstructions that used to take a day, now can be done in about an hour!

🧪⚛️ #ptycho
paper and install links:
academic.oup.com/mam/article/...

PtyRAD: A High-Performance and Flexible Ptychographic Reconstruction Framework with Automatic Differentiation

Abstract. Electron ptychography has recently achieved unprecedented resolution, offering valuable insights across diverse material systems, including in th

academic.oup.com

2 2

David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · Aug 4

Good use case for comic sans

1 1

David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · Aug 2

I don't know how many were posters. Overall probably a 10-15% drop. For cancelled invited talks it felt larger, or perhaps it was that my area had a lot of invited talks from China, reflecting the huge investments and activity there on this topic

David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · Aug 1

I’m told we had about 200 cancelled talks due to visa problems or US funding cuts. We were told not to travel, but have travel funds that will vanish if we don’t, so the whole gang was here

1 1

David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · Jul 26

Given the location, we know he didn’t simply walk

David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · Jul 20

That earned a follow

David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · Jul 13

Actually the original 3 make sense to watch after Andor. There are no others

David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · Jul 13

a man with a red face is standing in a space ship and saying it 's a trap .

Alt: Admiral Akbar saying it 's a trap .

media.tenor.com

1 1

David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · Jul 8

Our hands-on workshop on Electron #Ptychography ! ⚛️🧪 using our new fast python code starts tomorrow, Tuesday, July 8. Lecture Schedule is below, for folks who want to listen in on-line. We hope to post the tutorial and code walk through videos later.

cornell.zoom.us/j/9512638476...

Schedule of lectures for the ptychography workshop, from 8-11 July

Reposted by David A Muller

"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · Jul 4

This is fantastic, do read it.

Popehat Agitates And Irritates @kenwhite.bsky.social · Jul 4

www.popehat.com/p/the-fourth...

The Fourth Of July, Rethought

Can Any Nation So Conceived Long Endure?

www.popehat.com

2 29 160

David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · Jul 2

Canandaigua for ice cream, Watkins Glenn for boat tours

David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · Jul 1

Took a break and conducted some pier review last week. 12/10

Canandaiga lake pier at sunset. It has lots of little boat sheds

1 7

Reposted by David A Muller

Jessica Pellien @jessicapellien.bsky.social · Nov 25

One of my favorite things is seeing how publishers around the world reinterpret covers for foreign language editions of our books. The Alchemy of Us is being published in Korean. A side by side comparison -- same great content, totally different vibe.

David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · Jun 16

Celebrating Hari’s thesis defense with a NaNbO3-themed cake. It is layered in 3D to match his paper rdcu.be/eiV0u

Hari starts (multi)slicing the cake decorated with M&Ms laid out in a perovskite lattice

1 3

David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · Jun 10

Keep it as a badge of honor

1 4

David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · Jun 3

Very faint aurora in Ithaca

View over the Cornell golf course at night , looking North, showing one faint band of nitrogen plasma

1 4

Reposted by David A Muller

Kristian G. Andersen @kgandersen.bsky.social · May 30

The end of US leadership in science, technology, and innovation.

All in one little table.

A tremendous gift to China, courtesy of the GOP.

nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/00-NSF...

37 420 1.1K

David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · May 28

Danielle was one of Lena’s students 🧪

cryoEM papers @cryoempapers.bsky.social · May 28

Revealing the Crystalline Architecture of Semicrystalline Ion Exchange Membranes for the Design of Conductive and Durable Alkaline Anion Exchange Membranes pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40415331/ #cryoem

1 1 4

David A Muller @davidamuller.bsky.social · May 17

Hey. I remember you worked for Max. You’re right about the metals fraction of R&D being too high. I’ve worked with Corning for over 20 years